Further Perspectives & Distortion ~ An Encyclopedia Of British Experimental And Avant-Garde Music 1976-1984 Clamshell

The thing with this 3 cd set is working out if it’s art and some genius or is it just mainly pretentious rubbish and the compilers are taking the mickey.. you know your in dangerous territory when throbbing gristle and nurse with wound are some of the easier to listen to pieces! That said if your in your 50s, getting fat, going bald and you used to buy such things as the rising from the red sand cassettes. Death in Brussels and those DIY cassettes out the back of the NME in 78 – 83 time then this could be right up your street... I would go on to say don’t play it when your girlfriend comes around but I don’t need to as you probably live alone and haven’t had a girl friend for 30 years.. that said this compilation will help fill that void if only slightly... it’s genuinely very interesting and unusual.. Robert Rentals paralysis alone makes it worth buying for me personally... you need to be tough and battle hardened with this one as some of its very hard going but still an overall worthwhile purchase... 7/10

Mixed bag

i really appreciated the mix of styles, putting jazz next to noise and free improv reminded me of Kevin Martins Jazz Satellites compilation on Virgin, the AMM track on Further Perspectives & Distortion was actually slated to be on the Jazz Satellites 2 compilation which sadly never happened.This is music you can lose yourself in, i got this for Xmas and i put the headphone on lay on the couch and closed my eyes and i was taken somewhere elseit challenged some of my Punky prejudices about proggy acts like Henry Cow.although the tracklisting is apparently arbitrarily alphabetical it throws up some interesting sequences that seem almost too good to be an accident, take for instance disc 2 tracks 6 &7 (i'm not typing those long band names!) a wire side project track drifts into a Henry Cow offshoot so perfectly that anyone not paying attention could think they were the same track was that an accident? really ? ;-)I agree with the review on Louder than war, disc 3 is strongest and the sleeve notes should have had more biographical info to help people seek out other work by these artists. though i recognise that the limited commercial prospects of a release like this probably didn't justify the work that went into more mainstream box sets like "to the outside of everything". Bravo Cherry Red keep it up!